In 2008 my husband and I decided to try our hand at farming. We had no previous experience at what we were doing except for raising a few laying hens. After all the media hype with E-coli and other strange things in our food we just had a strong desire to know where our food was coming from. We both have full time jobs and a 14 year old son. We have jumped into this with both feet and we are learning as we go. We are interested to hear other people's comments.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

It started with a beautiful rainbow. Isn't this picture so inspirational with the Irving propane truck in the foreground. tee hee

I thought the rainbow would show up better.

Well once again its the case of "never say never". Words have alot of calories. That's why I don't seem to be able to lose any weight. I keep eating my words. Sigh....

I always said that we would never, ever get a trampoline for J. Well, Dave found a near new trampoline in the local paper for next to nothing. Sooooo here it is. We are having a blast with it.

J. and the trampoline

The weather is holding out. It's been just beautiful. Some days are a bit chilly, but mostly sunny. The problem like I mentioned in my last post is that we are not getting any amounts of rain. Not good. By now my garden has a few inches of water between the rows. At the moment, it's almost dust. Not good. But my garlic is doing wonderful.

The Garlic

My rhubard almost didn't make it. Dave didn't realize it was there and tilled the garden. Uh oh! This is all I have left of it.

The rhubard on it's last legs

Febe and the exploding udder.

The goats are doing well. They all go outside together now. Esme is terrorizing Cindi Lou. Febe is terrorizing Esme, but most of the time protecting Cindi Lou. My dilemma now is should I get rid of Esme or Febe. I was going to get rid of Febe since she's not very nice with J. But.....she gets along with everyone except Esme. Esme on the other hand doesn't get along with Febe or Cindi Lou. Even J. would rather me get rid of Esme than Febe. His opinion is....

"Mum, Febe is a good mother and milker, you don't know what you're going to get with Esme. I like Esme, but you sometimes have to think about the big picture. I can always stay out of Febe's way. But she is getting nicer to me."

My child is wise beyond his 9 years.

We are going to band one of the boys. It's a buck year. Everyone has had bucklings. Not a good thing. It's hard to sell them. I really hate to think that they would go for meat, but.....

Cindi Lou, Mike and Art

Last night I seperated Mike and Arthur from their mom, so I can get some milk in the morning. It didn't go so well. There was whole lot of blatting going on. But this morning everyone seemed happy and I had 2 litres of milk! Which I am drinking now. Ahhh! It's so good.

I have been trying to take photos of the kids, but it's hard to take a nice photo of flying objects! I love this photo. Look at Mike's legs. He is just flying. (ignore the junk in the background).

The Wild goat rodeo

Cindi Lou had little scabs all over her body. We have no clue why. I even called the vet and they have no clue why. So I've treated her with Cy-Lence and everyone else for that matter in case it's a case of lice or mites. It seems like it's doing better. It's against my religion to drink, but these goats are working hard to drive me to it!

Cindi Lou Who

Otis is doing well. He likes to stick his tongue out at us. He's going to the big pasture up the road in a few weeks. His hair loss is doing better. We treated him with Cy-Lence and it seems like it did the trick. We have a different problem now. Dave got the farmer up the road to come and castrate him because we were told that he hadn't been pinched where we got him. So Herbie, the farmer came to do it (and he's done it many, many times.) He can't find "them" to pinch "them". Hmmm....strange.

Otis

The following photo is the perfect reason why you should plant your veggies in the greenhouse within a few days of cleaning it out. Not cleaning out your greenhouse and waiting a few weeks to plant your veggies!

My Evil Greenhouse!

This is called doing your work twice!!! I swear.. I'll never learn. I thought I was getting a jump on the year. I guess not!

Most of the pigs are gone. Only one left. He was supposed to leave at the same time as the others, but the guy's car broke down on the way, so he's coming Tuesday. If he stays here any longer Dave is charging him boarding fees which is normal.

J. feeding the piglets

Two of our young chickens have died yesterday and today. One from being picked to death and the other, we aren't sure why. Chickens are evil things. I hope we don't lose anymore. The two we did lose were pullets. Crud.

Last week was Stampede Day at our place. Who needs the Calgary Stampede when you have goats!

I needed to get Cindi Lou out of the pasture to feed her. So I just opened the gate a bit and Febe stuck her nose through. I grabbed her collar, but at the same time Esme tried to sneak out also. So I grabbed her collar too. (do you see where this is going?) For a split second I had control of the situation. Then my foot got caught in a tree root. There I go being dragged around for a few seconds (felt like minutes) on the ground by two goats before I realize...."Let go, stupid dummy!" All this time, Dave and a visitor are watching me thinking..."What is she doing?"

Never a dull moment.

Yesterday J. and I painted the barn, well one side of it. Then we ran out of paint. Then he painted his tree fort.

Tomorrow I have the entire day planned..

-get chicken feed

-do banking

-clean sheet day

-clean (and I mean scrub on my knees kinda clean) the kitchen floor

-paint the french door in the kitchen

-clean the goat pen

-make supper so we can eat for 4:30 so we can go to drum lessons

-go fishing with J. after school.

Phew... I think that's it! Dave asked what I was going to do in the afternoon after I've done this list.

Today was a good sermon at church. We had Calvin Smith from CMI come and explain creationism and how is pertains to regular everyday life instead of evolution, which we don't beleive in. www.creation.com

Sunday, April 11, 2010

All is well. Febe kidded last Thursday. She gave birth to identical twin boys!! Not so happy. But the Lord gives us, what the Lord gives us. We've decided that we are going to keep one and breed it to Cindi Lou Who and Esme. Maybe even Whisper.

We had the problem of trying to name the bucklings. Dave wanted to name them "This One" and "That One". I found it cute but I really didn't want to name them that. At work we have two older guys working with us. They are always pulling pranks and acting foolish. Sooooooo..... I want you to meet.. "This one Arthur" and "That one Mike". Their official names will have Spring Peeper in front of their names.

This One Arthur and That One Mike

I'm kinda worried for them. I don't find that they are eating much. But they are looking healthy. They are getting bigger and playing and frolicking. It's just that Febe's udder is humunga bunga!! I had to milk her yesterday and I milked over 2 litres!!! and I wasn't even done. But they must be finding milk somewhere's.

I got home from an Epicure party a few hours ago and I noticed that the neighbour had a chimney fire going. The fire dept is still there. The strange thing was that she had no fire in the furnace. She just had the oil furnace going. Not good. I'll have to ask Dave what went on. He's in the fire dept.

April 14

Well I had to milk Febe again tonight. They are favouring one side. I got 2 litres on just one side. The poor girl was in misery. I called my goat lady and she said that I should milk her morning and night to keep her even and they'll have enough throughout the day and night.

Cindi Lou Who having lunch

Cindi Lou went to school Monday. She did well and the kids loved her. They even got to feed her. She was so tired when I left that she fell asleep in my arms on the way to the car. But she's becoming a little minx. She's jumping on the milking stand now, while we aren't there, then grabbing things off the upper shelves. She is growing like a weed. She's eating some grain now, but she won't drink out of the bucket so she's still on the bottle. I had to put a bale of hay on the milking stand to stop her from jumping up.

Tonight (April 15) I milked Febe and she hardly had any on both sides, so they must be keeping her even. That's good. But she's got a sore on her head. I think she goes under the feeder to clean up after them and she rubs her head. I hope that's all it is. I'm telling ya, these goats are going to drive me to drink. And I don't drink! This morning I had so much on my mind, I got to work and I thought, "Oh Crud!! I left Febe on the milking stand!" So I call our neighbour in a panic and he went to check. No, I hadn't left her on the stand. I need to get back in the groove of things. Is there ever a groove?

Monday we treated ourselves to lobster. It was good! We had enough for 2 meals. At 4.75$ a pound, that's pretty good. It was actually cheaper than eating in a restaurant.

YUM!!

The chicks have been moved to a larger place. I think they doubled in size overnight. Otis is doing well. His fur stopped coming out. He's off the bottle (that sounds strange) and drinking water. Soon he'll be going to the big pasture up the road.

This coming Saturday is pig day! Everyone is coming to get their piggies. That'll be nice. We are keeping 2 for ourselves for meat this fall.

Ok, it's enough. I have to publish this post. It's been sitting around long enough.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Busy, busy, busy! It never stops. I sometimes just want to sleep and not wake up for a few weeks. That, I think would be bliss. But life goes on and the world is not going to stop to let me off anytime soon.

Well first things first. Happy Easter and our baby is now 9 years old. It seems like just yesterday that he was born. Boy I miss when he was a baby. He's growing up too fast. Soon he's going to graduate from high school! Oh well... such is life.

J.'s birthday.

Most of the farm animals are doing well. Except for Otis. Otis seems to be losing his fur at an alarming rate. Between his back legs he's completely bald. It's coming out in clumps. I've never seen such a thing. Mind you, this is only our second bull calf. We've asked several cattle farmers around here and they all say the same thing. "It's normal." Weird. Oh well. He's eating well, still a sookie and looking normal otherwise. So we'll leave it at that. If any of you have seen this before let me know.

Our new hens

We have a few new additions to the farm. We bought a few bantie hens ( like we didn't have enough) from a friend. He didn't want them anymore because he needed the room. 3 hens are just banties and one hen is a Millefleur and so is the rooster. That's why Dave wanted them. They are kind of scraggly, but the feathers will grow back one day.

I'm having a dilemma. I'd love to let my hens run free but we have so many wild mink in the area that I don't know if they'd survive or not. And also, will they lay in the house or am I going to have to go egg hunting on four acres of land everyday?

Charlotte and the kids enjoying the hot spring air.

The piglets are doing extremely well. They should be ready to hit the road next week or so. We are keeping 2 for ourselves. Dave brought a piglet to the school in Yarmouth last week. A friend of ours teaches grade 3 and they were reading Charlotte's Web. She asked Dave if he could come in with a piglet. I don't know who was more excited, the kids or our friend? Not one kid had ever seen a pig and only 2 had seen hay before. Isn't that sad. It's not like we live in New York City. There's farms everywhere around here.

We've come to another hard decision. We have to sell Febe. She's a great milker, great mom and great goat, but she's really, really bad with kids. The two legged variety. I cannot leave her alone with J. for a minute or she attacks him. This is not good. She's a very aggressive goat and I figure that she thinks he's a small goat she can bully and she attacks him. Last summer she smacked him in the chest and sent him flying. This cannot happen again and he loves the goats, he wants to help, but he can't when she's around, which is all the time since she's the head goat.

So this winter when she's dried off I will put an ad in the paper to sell her. She was due to kid today but she's late. I think it'll be a few days still. They can be up to 5 days early or 5 days late.

So since we are going to sell Febe I need another replacement. So without further ado let me introduce to ya'll to ....Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who!

J. and Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who

She came all the way from Sussex New Brunswick. That's an 8 hour drive from here. And no I did not drive that far for her. I have a friend that goes to Bethany Bible College in Sussex. He was coming home for the weekend so he was nice enough to bring her along.

She was born March 25 2010. She was in the CAE prevention program, so that means I have to bottle feed her. It's fun, but alot of work. All the milk I had frozen in the freezer for myself is quickly dwindling down for her. Oh well. She is a sweetie.

Well it's Easter today. The day our Lord and Saviour arose. We organized a breakfast at the church and we had an early morning service. I had my parents over for supper and had rappie pie and I'm stuffed!

Egg hunting

The Easter Bunny passed for J. and left lots of eggs outside for the hunt. The weather was great for it also. It's been gorgeous for a week now. We are getting June weather in April. On the down side it's extremely dry at the moment. It's usually so wet now that we feel moldy. So if it's dry now, by August when it's usually dry it's going to be worse. That means no fires, no weinie roasting, nada, nothing, zip! We'll just have to wait and see what the good Lord has in store for us.